The Chinese Honeymoon Period

By Gene J. Hsu

"An unprecedented approach to solving our China leadership dilemmas"

 

This first-time author has revealed the most important message for a generation. America entered a Chinese honeymoon period in 1972 when Nixon visited the People's Republic of China (PRC). While both sides benefited from "China's opening" to the West, current geopolitical tensions are a microcosm of our collective myopia and a lack of cultural awareness.

 

Transform the reality of your success and those you partner with in China with The Chinese Honeymoon Period - the only practical, cultural awareness guide based on extracting human psychological traits and managing their perceptions and misperceptions - from Gene J. Hsu, author of Solving CHINA's Unknown Unknowns and host of China Myth Podcast.

 

Winning in China begins with WHY, not yours, theirs.

 

What if you could create new communication patterns with your Chinese counterparts to replace frustrating circular conversations? What if you could develop REAL Guanxi relationships without compromising your values or ethics? What if you could understand what they mean beyond the literal things they say?

 

It might feel increasingly difficult to find common ground with emboldened Chinese attitudes in a world full of fear and uncertainty about China's rise in power and influence. Chinese attitudes have changed. They are more nationalistic, self-centered, and arrogant, but only relative and proportional to China's ascension on the global stage.

 

In this book, Gene weaves a collection of real stories, lessons, and characters from 20+ years living and working in Greater China to help anyone learn HOW Chinese people think, WHY they behave the way they do, and HOW to create more positive communication patterns that lead to more constructive cooperation.

 

This book is the result of a lifetime struggling to reconcile between two worlds, an American upbringing with Chinese heritage, that represents a microcosm of humanity's greatest challenge in 2022 and beyond - How does the West peacefully coexist with China and achieve greater common prosperity for all.

 

Knowing how to speak Chinese doesn't mean you know what to say in Chinese, but knowing what to say is a win in any language. The Chinese Honeymoon Period is your beginning for knowing what to say to transform your experience in China into a more rewarding journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: EME Consultants LLC
• Release date: Feb 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201328252

Gene J. Hsu

Gene J. Hsu is an American entrepreneur with Chinese heritage and the founder of EME China Consultants, a cross-cultural training, coaching, and business advisory company he started in Shanghai in 2014 with a team of marketing interns. His Greater China experience began in 1996 as Taiwan Country Manager for an American manufacturer and shifted to Mainland China in 2004, covering various markets and industries coinciding with China's rise. Gene has run the entire gambit from expat to instructor, consultant, and entrepreneur in China. He regularly teaches a mindset for China business at universities in China and his alma mater, Georgia Tech. Gene lives with his wife and son in Irvine, California, where he hosts the China Myth Podcast and teaches Solving CHINA's Unknown Unknowns to students online.

Book preview

Dear Reader

We all have a stake in how an ascending China cooperates with the Western-led world order of yesterday because humanity is now too interconnected to be unipolar. I didn't write this book to address geopolitical issues affecting US-China relations. Instead, my mission is to improve our collective harmony, one cross-cultural relationship at a time by highlighting key cultural differences that can be reconciled for more constructive cooperation. Business is the vehicle, the Guanxi engine will drive your progress in the Chinese arena, and your imagination and curiosity will advance the success of any endeavor within its cultural and ideological borders.

This book was written with the American reader in mind because our perceptions are most similar and derive from an American cultural perspective, its melting pot characteristics notwithstanding. As we analyze cultural dichotomies and contrasting viewpoints, we also need to remember that each individual, regardless of heritage, is unique. We want to avoid stereotyping, even as we generalize Chinese thinking in broad strokes.

Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes is a reminder to practice empathy consciously and proactively, but this can be an unnatural exercise for many. We are selfish in this regard, even if we are generous with everything else. To make substantive breakthroughs, I implore you to deploy positive imagination and purpose-driven curiosity toward the cultural dilemmas I encountered in China. There was always something I should have approached differently in hindsight, and it is your responsibility to extract those lessons and apply them appropriately in foresight. Suppose you digest this narrative as I intended. Then you will gain a fresh perspective for all future interactions in China and be equipped to advance your pursuits to their maximum potential in collaboration with your Chinese counterparts.

Chinese readers, you may find this book valuable as a means of understanding why most Westerners struggle with Chinese culture (中国文化 zhōngguó wénhuà) and adapting to how China works (中国国情 zhōngguó guóqíng). Utilize these insights as an opportunity to meet us halfway in developing mutual trust and more constructive cooperation. Every conflict has responsibilities on both sides, and every individual can make contributions toward a better outcome.

NOTE: In this work, China refers to Mainland China that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) governs, and Chinese people refers to citizens of Mainland China, as opposed to overseas citizens of Chinese ethnicity.

Preface

From the time I was old enough to imagine who I was and who I wanted to be, I always felt like I was caught between two worlds.

More than thirty years ago, I began writing a song that was probably more about girls than anything else at the time, but it foreshadowed how the rest of my life would unfold:

Sometimes it seems forever

for things to come to form

Waiting for and not breaking through

and unsure what to do

Instead of confidently discovering a niche and forging a path ahead in life, I eternally struggled to fit in, believing because I looked different, I was different. I felt I would never be fully accepted as an Asian in America, at least not by girls.

As a youngster, I excelled in sports, the most useful talent for being popular growing up in the deep South of Atlanta, Georgia. But my insecurities led me always to attend our high school prom solo or not go at all. I never got rejected either, as the courage to ask someone never materialized.

After high school, I attended Georgia Tech, the finest engineering college south of the Mason-Dixon line. Still, I remained proud of skipping classes, even bragging for years after graduating that I didn't know where one of my final exams was being held because I'd cut class the entire semester.

Instead of working toward a successful career as an engineer, I grew my hair long, taught myself to play electric guitar, and joined a heavy metal rock band. Perhaps music is in my DNA, but my interest in music materialized from the perception that I'd have more success with women if I were Eddie Van Halen. Nevertheless, music became an integral part of my persona that I would later incorporate into Meetup events I organized at the Blue Marlin Bar & Restaurant in the Jing'an District of Shanghai. Of course, I was never talented or dedicated enough to become a professional musician, which is part of my story and how I eventually discovered my purpose and place in this world.

My American roots and Chinese ethnicity always placed me at the intersection of two conflicting worlds. And decades after my insecurities around girls dissipated, the geopolitics of today's world is again forcing me to consider, if not choose, between my Chinese heritage and my American values and upbringing.

INTERCULTURAL MARRIAGE

The second time around, I married my dream girl. In hindsight, with varying priorities during different stages of life, my first marriage seemed to result from the sense that now is the time to get married. However, after seven years of rarely having any disagreements, I ultimately suggested that we weren't compatible, to which we amicably dissolved our marriage. We separated our accounts, split our assets 50-50, printed divorce papers online, signed them in front of a notary, and remained close until I began a new relationship. My ex continued to manage our joint checking account until she got engaged, which led to our final division of assets a year after our official divorce. Shortly after that, I met my dream girl and the mother of my son.

Was I any more aware of what I wanted in my next partner?

The answer is probably not, but she was everything I could dream of wanting in a significant other. Beautiful, intelligent, funny, pretty, sexy. Yes, I said pretty and beautiful, because if these two words have different meanings, the lady I married was both in my mind. She was a visiting scholar from China doing postdoctoral research at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. She had a model's appearance but with credentials to make my father, a retired professor of physics at Georgia State University, proud. In other words, she was my ideal companion who checked all the boxes in both worlds.

We had our first date in Las Vegas, where we returned precisely one year later for our honeymoon. My proverbial Chinese honeymoon period, which we will discuss at length in this book, ended when discussions of a real honeymoon began following our visit to Tiffany's at Phipps Plaza in Buckhead for an engagement ring. The promise of marriage was the tipping point for an avalanche of expectations that immediately followed, foreshadowing the PROS and CONS of deepening Guanxi to its highest level with someone outside of a bloodline.

We made our marriage official at the DeKalb County courthouse a week before I departed for Shanghai to begin an expat assignment as Asia Pacific Sales Director, but there was a catch. My newlywed wife wasn't ready to give up her career in America and move back to China because she had beaten astronomical odds to be living and working in the United States. She was born and raised in a village outside of Hunan province, the birthplace of Chairman Mao, where his portrait still hangs in the living room entrance overlooking their family dining table. Students representing her province at prestigious graduate programs like the one she attended in Beijing were less than a handful each year, with even fewer matriculating overseas to America. She beat those odds, but her success also contributed to her sense of entitlement from reaching the apex of China's meritocracy, the highest status one can attain without Guanxi connections.

I lived my childhood fantasy for an entire year, right up until the first night of our actual honeymoon at The Venetian Hotel turned into a nightmare. As soon as my Chinese honeymoon period treatment ended and our real honeymoon began, her expectations of me flipped 180 degrees.

When we were dating, she barely acknowledged that we were even a couple, and she had very few expectations of me because I was still an outsider in her mind. She generally seemed impressed that I could play golf and tennis well enough to instruct others, along with a talent for most sport-related activities. Playing the piano or guitar and singing original songs that I had written seemed to enchant her. But she would later show little interest that I had music as a hobby, even as she asked me to perform whenever we had guests at our home. It's all about Face, as you'll soon learn in the stories and lessons to come.

After we were married, we immediately became family, the highest Guanxi (关系 guānxi) level in Chinese culture. Guanxi is the relationship between two people that reflect their expectations from each other in terms of favoritism, referrals for connections, and the sharing of inside information. In practical terms, it defines HOW THEY OPERATE.

My soon-to-be wife is conservative by most measures, having grown up in a small, 5th-tier province in Hunan, China. But she immediately moved in with me upon accepting her position at Emory and transitioning to Atlanta from Birmingham, Alabama. Before completing her move from Birmingham to Atlanta, she had her personal effects stored in my garage while she waited for furniture to arrive at her empty, newly rented apartment.

She never moved into her apartment but kept paying rent to retain a safety or backup.